Kevin Duffy: Maryland going places, UConn going nowhere

Updated 12:53 am, Sunday, September 15, 2013

EAST HARTFORD -- After a week of hype, after 501 yards of pure wreckage, all that remained was a single heckler, a college-aged kid leaning over the student section fence to boo Randy Edsall one last time.

"Yo," the kid shouted as Edsall walked through the tunnel. "The ACC is weak!"

Problem is, Maryland is going to the Big 10. The big problem around here is that UConn is going nowhere.

Yep, the Huskies are headed for 0-3. Just hours before a Randy Edsall offense tore up Rentschler, Michigan needed a late touchdown to topple Akron, avoiding a Towson-like catastrophe. As you know, the Wolverines come to The Rent next weekend. Just a hunch: They're a little better than Maryland.

A hellish season in East Hartford appears to be taking shape. The Huskies defense, a group that made C.J. Brown look like Johnny Football Saturday night, appears to be the perfect bounceback remedy for Michigan's Devin Gardner.

And recent history suggests there isn't often a bounceback remedy from 0-3. The numbers are as outlandish as the ones the Terps piled up against this porous UConn defense: Over the past five seasons, 59 Division I teams have started 0-3. Only four turned it around and made bowl games -- and we're talking Liberty Bowl, Hawaii Bowl, Papa Johns and Little Ceasars. As for the other 55? Well, those teams combined to go 133-427. That's a 0.311 win percentage. Move that decimal one spot to the left and you've got UConn's chance at knocking off Warde Manuel's alma mater next Saturday.

Some more simple math for you: An atrocious defense + an inconsistent quarterback + virtually zero run game = what you saw before you inevitably left in the third quarter.

Here's what you missed: Randy Edsall smiling all the way from the 50-yard line through the tunnel, avoiding even the shortest moment of eye contact with that last heckler. Why bother?

Randy Edsall is 3-0 for the first time at Maryland. His program, which hit rock-bottom in Year One, looks to be on the upswing. Down in College Park, he's assembled some legitimate talent (read: Stefon Diggs), the type of gamebreaker he never had at UConn. The Huskies' secondary didn't have a prayer against Diggs. That much was obvious.

"This was a very explosive team we played," said UConn coach Paul Pasqualoni. "We didn't make enough plays stopping C.J. Brown tonight. They had a big night running and we had a hard time tackling."

Brown, Edsall's versatile quarterback, looks better than Cody Endres or Zach Frazer or Tyler Lorenzen or anybody he had post-Orlovsky in Storrs. As time passes, it's becoming clear that UConn-to-Maryland was not a lateral move, as some initially suggested. The ceiling is indeed higher with guys like Diggs and Brown.

"You saw what (Brown) did," Edsall said. "He runs well, throws well and distracts the defense. And he has some real good weapons with him."

As Brown and Diggs ripped off yardage Edsall had only seen when West Virginia came to town, Maryland still let the Huskies hang. They twice failed on fourth down. They threw an interception in UConn's red zone, Brown's screen pass slipping through the hands of tailback Brandon Ross and into the arms of Taylor Mack. They fumbled on the UConn 30-yard line early in the third.

But UConn, which lacks the gamebreakers it saw Saturday and will see again versus Michigan, gave those chances right back. A blown coverage with eight seconds remaining in the first half resulted in a 48-yard connection between Brown and receiver Lavern Jacobs, who was so uncovered that he came to a dead stop, caught the pass, turned around and still raced up the sidelines untouched.

Among other things, UConn needed to win field position Saturday. Instead, punter Cole Wagner shanked a few 20-yarders.

Maryland ran 50 plays through the first three quarters, and 11 of them went for 20-plus yards. That's 22 percent, my friends. That's one of the nation's best defenses a year ago quickly becoming one of the worst.

"(Michigan) is a great opportunity," Pasqualoni said. "You look at that as a great opportunity against a very good team."

You can look at 0-3 for what it is -- something most power conference teams never experience. Big-time programs schedule cupcakes early in the season, almost always avoiding three straight losses to kick things off. UConn lost to its cupcake last week, and now it's got a monster looming.

Of all these teams that have started 0-3 in the past five years, only a handful have come from power conferences. Only two have reached eight wins, the number that usually separates a solid year from a "blah" one. Nevada did it in 2009 and Rutgers completed the turnaround in 2008.

Nevada had Colin Kaepernick that year. UConn has Chandler Whitmer -- and a defense that could yield Kaepernick numbers to a few more quarterbacks.

Rutgers, which opened '08 with losses to Fresno State, North Carolina and Navy, had moderate talent and the luxury of those toss-up games on its truly mediocre Big East schedule.